Despite A Low Stake In Box, Aaron Levie Has A High Influence

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Box CEO Aaron Levie made enterprise startups sexy again, though this week’s Box IPO announcement revealed that Levie only owns 5.7% percent of the company. (Levie sold off stock to raise the money he needed to punch through the enterprise space).

But 28-year-old Levie, who has been credited with building a big company that genuinely makes life easier for people and companies, may take some solace. And not just from his stake in what will be a significant IPO, but also from the fact that, according to one data analysis company, he appears to far more influential in Silicon Valley’s VC and entrepreneurship scene than previously thought.

Influence analysis company PeerIndex looked at the 25,000 most influential people in venture capital and tech entrepreneurship on Twitter.

They then built a large graph of these folk and observed their tweets and conversations over several months. These people tweet about 40,000 times a day (although typically half this level on the weekends).

PeerIndex then calculated a VC & Entrepreneurship Index — a ranking of how influential they are amongst themselves. Remember, this is solely influence within that community.

It turns out that Aaron Levie came top of this list.

This means that amongst his peers of investors and entrepreneurs, Levie is the one who most produces content and insight which resonates with the rest of the community (according to this data, at least).

His “Entrepreneurship PI” score is 95; and the highest human. (Only TechCrunch at 96 and Forbes also at 95 are higher). This community PI score is a bit like a localised Pagerank of the influence of those users.

And, well, if you’ve read his tweets, you’ll see why. This former amateur comedian is both funny and insightful on the day’s tech news and trends.

The list itself is pretty fascinating because it gives us an idea of who the kingmakers are; and where smart folk may be bubbling up (at least from what we can see via Twitter).

Clearly there are some very well established names in there but also some that stand out – like Benedict Evans, who only recently arrived from London to join Andreessen Horowitz. Everyone of these folk, apart from Brad Feld and Fred Wilson are in the Bay Area.

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CrunchBase

BioAaron Levie is cofounder and CEO of Box, which he launched in 2005 with cofounder and CFO Dylan Smith.
Levie is the visionary behind Box’s product and platform strategy, focused on incorporating the best of traditional content management with an intuitive user experience suited to the way people collaborate and work today.
Levie leads the company in its mission to transform the way people and businesses …